Bronze Age cultures kept and curated human remains as relics over several generations, study finds 

Bronze Age people had a tradition of retaining and curating human remains as relics, and they’d keep them for several generations, a new study has found.

A team from the University of Bristol used radiocarbon dating and CT scans on Bronze Age discoveries found throughout the UK dating back 4,500 years. 

Among the discoveries were a range of items either carved from human bones or bones belonging to someone else buried much later – likely kept as relics.

The findings suggest the relics were used as a tangible way of honouring and remembering known individuals between close communities and over generations. 

This included an example of a musical instrument that had been carved from a femur and years later buried as a ‘grave good’ with a completely different person. 

The discovery has helped researchers paint a more detailed picture of death customs of the time – with some ‘seemingly macabre’ to modern eyes. 

This is an instrument made from a human femur bone. It was found buried with another man as ‘grave goods’ – the two likely knew each other in life

Lead author Dr Thomas Booth said in modern secular societies human remains are seen as ‘particularly powerful objects’ and it was the same during the Bronze Age. 

‘However, they treated and interacted with the dead in ways which are inconceivably macabre to us today,’ explained Booth.

‘After radiocarbon dating Bronze Age human remains alongside other materials, we found many of the partial remains had been buried a significant time after the person had died, suggesting a tradition of retaining and curating human remains.’

‘People seem to have curated the remains of people who had lived within living or cultural memory,’ he added.

The ‘relics’ included tributes to people who likely played an important role in their life or their communities, or with whom they had a well-defined relationship.

This wasn’t just family that relics were kept for, according to Booth, who said it could have included a tradesperson, a friend or even an enemy.

The idea was that they would have a relic – a literal piece of their remains – to remember them, tell stories about them, and pass on to future generations. 

In one example from Wiltshire, a human thigh bone had been crafted to make a musical instrument and included as grave goods close to Stonehenge.

The carved and polished artefact was found with other items including stone and bronze axes, a bone plate, a tusk, and a ceremonial pronged object. 

Radiocarbon dating of the musical instrument suggests it belonged to someone this person knew during their lifetime.

Professor Joanna Bruck, principal investigator on the project, said: ‘Although fragments of human bone were included as grave goods with the dead, they were also kept in the homes of the living.’

Unique Pronged Bronze Object found in Wilsford alongside the human bone musical instrument

Unique Pronged Bronze Object found in Wilsford alongside the human bone musical instrument

Bruck added that they would also be buried under house floors and even placed on display – possibly for the most important relics.

‘This suggests that Bronze Age people did not view human remains with the sense of horror or disgust that we might feel today.’

Researchers also used microcomputed tomography (micro-CT) at the Natural History Museum to look at microscopic changes to the bone produced by bacteria, to get an indication of how the body was treated while it was decomposing.

They found some had been cremated before being split up, some exhumed after burial, and some had been de-fleshed by being left to decompose on the ground.

Dr Booth said: ‘This study really highlights the strangeness and perhaps the unknowable nature of the distant past from a present-day perspective.

This image shows a skeleton from Windmill Fields, Stockton-upon-Tees buried with skulls and long bones of three people who had died between several decades and a century earlier

This image shows a skeleton from Windmill Fields, Stockton-upon-Tees buried with skulls and long bones of three people who had died between several decades and a century earlier

‘It seems the power of these human remains lay in the way they referenced tangible relationships between people in these communities and not as a way of connecting people with a distant mythical past.’

There is already evidence people living in Britain during the Bronze Age practiced a range of funerary rites, including primary burial, excoriation, cremation and mummification. 

This research reveals the dead were encountered not just in a funerary context, but that human remains were regularly kept and circulated amongst the living.

These findings may tell us something about how Bronze Age communities in Britain drew upon memory and the past to create their own social identities. 

Unlike our regard for saintly relics today, they do not seem to have focused on very old human remains and the distant past of ancestors, rather they were concerned with the remains of those within living memory. 

The findings have been published in the journal Antiquity

BRONZE AGE BRITAIN: A PERIOD OF TOOLS, POTS AND WEAPONS LASTING NEARLY 1,500 YEARS

The Bronze Age in Britain began around 2,000 BC and lasted for nearly 1,500 years.

It was a time when sophisticated bronze tools, pots and weapons were brought over from continental Europe.

Skulls uncovered from this period are vastly different from Stone Age skulls, which suggests this period of migration brought new ideas and new blood from overseas. 

Bronze is made from 10 per cent tin and 90 per cent copper, both of which were in abundance at the time.

Crete appears to be a centre of expansion for the bronze trade in Europe and weapons first came over from the Mycenaeans in southern Russia.

It is widely believed bronze first came to Britain with the Beaker people who lived about 4,500 years ago in the temperate zones of Europe.

They received their name from their distinctive bell-shaped beakers, decorated in horizontal zones by finely toothed stamps.

The decorated pots are almost ubiquitous across Europe, and could have been used as drinking vessels or ceremonious urns.

Believed to be originally from Spain, the Beaker folk soon spread into central and western Europe in their search for metals.

Textile production was also under way at the time and people wore wrap-around skirts, tunics and cloaks. Men were generally clean-shaven and had long hair.

The dead were cremated or buried in small cemeteries near settlements.

This period was followed by the Iron Age which started around 650 BC and finished around 43 AD.